The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm de-facto jobless as-of this month, as my company I cofounded ceases operations. I realized I rushed too quickly into job seeking (potentially because I was seeking some validation I have value as I watch 4-5 years of work disappear into nothing), and I'm trying to back up and work a little on myself (+ spend more time with my daughter) before I start looking again.
There are a couple dimensions of my life and my health I'd like to improve, and I'm wondering if anyone here has any insight on any of them:
I've found myself masturbating and watching too much porn lately, probably because of more free time. I've always wanted to kick the porn habit (since I was a teenager), but have never found anything outside of momentary success. Does anyone have any advice on reasonable strategies here? I have no issues with masturbation, don't conform at all to the whole nofap nonsense, but instead have had an internally sourced (i.e. my wife knows about it and is fine with it) guilt-based relationship with porn most of my life that I think I ought to address.
I stopped meditating after a particularly bad retreat experience (+ increasingly painful daily sits before that), and I'd like to start-up again, but I sense a lot of inertia present as I attempt to establish a habit again.
Years ago, I had a really bad case of norovirus followed (a couple months later) by a skin infection that required fairly hardcore antibiotics. My gut has never been the same, I've had intermittent fatigue and diarrhea for years from it. Every single doctor I went to, early on, was judgy, unempathetic, and ultimately quite unhelpful, so I've not been back to doctors for a long time to try to figure things out. I've tried a lot of things personally but nothing has worked for longer than a couple weeks.
Anything anyone recommends I invest my time into with a bunch of free time? I'm running and going to the gym to lift 5-6 days a week nowadays, so I have a good exercise routine going.
Do some shared project with your daughter. Create something together.
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I would recommend yoga. I also had painful experiences with meditation and chronic pain generally. Feel you on doctors being dismissive and rude.
Yoga helped me learn to grow my awareness without having to sit in uncomfortable positions, and helped my pain tremendously. I found I was tensing my abdomen constantly which also played into stomach issues.
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Re. Porn: Time yourself.
Decide what sounds reasonable when you are clear headed, and set a timer when you decide it's time to blow out the pipes; including search time.
If you spend an hour polishing your hog before your hog is fully polished; you might be polishing too much. Give that hog a break!
Eg; if you can't finish your manual override in 25 mins; you probably didn't need to do a little controlled hormone rebalancing and were just doing it to kill time.
25 minutes!? You realise you don't need foreplay with yourself right? I get annoyed if it takes longer than 5. As do the other people in the kfc drive thru. Unless, maybe they are cheering me on? Regardless, there would be far too much honking if I took 25 minutes.
That includes setting the scene, selecting material, and cleanup/shame recovery time. The whole sesh, if you will.
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Oh hey, I cited your paper the other day: Bucklington F, "Measuring Police Response Times In A Sample of City Parks"
The judge was very impressed, but still told me to put my pants back on.
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